Serving in the Brazil, Fortaleza East Mission

Monday, May 29, 2017

This week was HOT! But other wise not at all bad! We had a lot of awesome teaching experiences and met a lot of really cool people! Last Monday we went to Fortaleza for the Day because I needed to GO to the Police Office and get a permanent visa. The Day in fortaleza was great! The part where I was supposed to get my visa....not so great! The church accidentally made a mistake with the paperwork they gave me before I left for Brazil, and so now we have to GO through this long drawn out process of getting na official document from the American Embassy here that says something along the lines of ´´Do not worry this Guy is chill´´ (Thats not an exact translation) Before I can get my visa, and all of this hás to happen before June 9th or I get deported.....so that might be interesting!

In other news, I started teaching English last week which was cool! It made me feel a little bit better about how difficult portuguese is for me right now! I have two classes I teach, one meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays and hás around 25 people in it, the other only meets Saturday Mornings and hás around 35 people in it. Everyone is awesome and it is a different experience for sure!

One funny story from the week was when we were vistiting a recent convert. My Companion and her were talking casually, then Elder Paixao asked her IF she would say the opening prayer. I am not sure what she Said, because I still cannot understand what people are saying in portuguese, so I was Just sitting quietly waiting for her and Elder Paixao to stop talking and for us to say the opening prayer. Well while I was waiting quietly for this, I say the members sister down the hallway, and so I called out a cheerful greeting to her with the intent of inviting her to join the lesson. Well when I did this the member Just burst out laughing and my companion gave me the look of ´´umm are you serious bro?´´ It turns out that they had not Just been talking, the member had Said Yes to saying the opening prayer and started right into it, so I did not realize that I was Just calling out in the middle of her prayer....Awkward.

Last piece of news is we baptized an awesome new member yesterday named Tatianie Who seems really excited about the church! Were up to 20 members here now!

Hope you all have a good week, and I want to leave you with my testimony that I know that God and Jesus Christ live, and that every Trial we face here on earth is to make us stronger. Finally, please never forget how personally and tenderly Jesus Christ loves every single one of you!

With lots of Love,

ElderFerrell

I am sorry I still cannot figure out how to send pictures here in Quixeramobim, hopefully will have more next week!

Monday, May 22, 2017

So, week two was definitely better than week one. It was a little rough on Thursday because I came down with a headcold (I feel like Brazil is treating my immune system like a punching bag, but ohh weelll)

On Saturday we had what was my first baptism here in Quixeramobim. His name is Robson (hobson) and he is awesome! It was strange because on Friday afternoon Elder Paixao and I had to go to where we had the baptism and ´´clean´´ the water, which meant we used a bucket to bail out the top few inches of things floating….definitly a different experience, but all went well and he was confirmed Yesterday in church!

I am loving the food here in brazil. They have this magical thing called Dim-Dim (Jin-Jin) that is like heaven on earth. Basically it is like a fruit flavored ice cream pop, but the fruit down here is soo good, so these things are literally addicting. Elder Paixao told me they are easy to make so we are going to start making them ourselves so we have a steady supply. Wednesdays are cool here because we get to go to another city, Quixada, for District meetings, and that was cool!

The language is coming very slowly. It is still very difficult having an entire city of people who want to talk to you but you cannot communicate, but hopefully in comes sooner rather than later! Tomorrow I start teaching a community English class that has 55 people signed up for it….We will see how that goes. I am not sure if all these people actually want to learn English, or if they just want to come and see the only white boy in the city talk funny, but either way It will be an adventure!

As far as lessons learned this week, the main one is that you only forget Sunscreen once in Brazil. The sun here is brutal! Luckilly I did not get burned too bad…..or maybe I did and the sun screen just doesn’t work because my skin is a seemingly permanent shade of red, but still. I have lost 3 kilograms already in the last two weeks….I have no Idea how much weight that actually is because I cannot look up the conversion factor for kilos to pounds…but judging by the way people react when they hear this I am guessing it’s a lot for two weeks.

Monday, May 15, 2017

Week one in Brazil was quite interesting! My last Sunday at the mtc was a little sad because I had to say goodbye to all my friends there, but come Monday morning I barely had time to think about it! I spent all Day and night Monday, and most of the Day on Tuesday traveling. One cool part was that even though I thought I would be alone on all of my flights, I actually was not at all! I ended up flying from Salt Lake to São Paulo with an Elder Who was returning to the Field after having to come home for family issues, so that was Nice, and then in the São Paulo airport I met up with a bunch of missionaries going to my same mission that were all coming from the São Paulo MTC.

(Quick note: in America spell check would let me know whenever I spelled a Word wrong...it wouldn´t really correct it, and mosto f the time neither would I, but at least I knew....Well, in Brazil they also have spell check that is aligned with the Portuguese language. So the two things I apologize for are the many misspellings which I´m sure are coming your way, and IF the computer corrects a Word to a portuguese Word and I do not catch it, its not that I AM alread that good at the language that I don´t even realize it...its the computer)

Anyways, upon arriving here in Fortaleza, our Mission President and his wife were there to meet us, along with all the STLs and the Assistants to the President. We all took pictures and then all the new missionaries loaded up into a van and went to drop our luggage off at the appartment we were staying in that night. (Not at all important, but there were goats in the street and it was funny. Even the brazillian missionaries were trying to take pictures of it and that made feel better for thinking how strange it was.) We then went to the mission home where we were again greeted by our President and all the Mission Home Missionaries singing our mission Hymn to us which was cool! We then ate lunch and had a lot of safety meetings like what to eat and so forth. After that we went to the Presidents house for dinner and He Sat and played guitar for us for a while, then we had a testimony meeting. Wednesday we had training at the church which was Nice because the church had Air Conditioning. I. Love. Air. Conditioning. Anyays, we were introduced to our trainers, mine is a Brazillian Elder named Elder Paixao, He is from São Paulo. We aslo found out where our Areas were. Then we Just did trainings all Day. Everyone was commenting on how good my Portuguese was (shout out to the awesome teachers at the Provo MTC) But also, I think their expectations were low because they all knew I was from the Provo MTC, and appaently missionaries from the Provo MTC dont usually know Portuguese when they get here.

My área is the city of Quixeromobim and is very special because Elder Paixao and I are the second or third set of Elder to be sent here. It is a brand new área! Were the only missionaries for the entire city which is awesome but difficult because it is not really that small. It is also VERY hot here, and the Sun is merciless. But all the same, its pretty cool. We took a bus out here on Thursday morning and got straight to work. The people here are so receptive, everyone we talked to invited us in to share a message. This is awesome, the only difficult part is getting them to follow up on commitments. We have A LOT of people Who want to be baptized but then nobody came to church on Sunday except for the 12 members we already have here. Thats another intersting part, there is not even a branch here its called a group. All in all Brazil is cool so far, the only downside, other than the heat, hás been the fact that while (to the shock of my friends in the MTC) I really like the food here, It does NOT like me. That and the language is really hard right now because I cannot understand anyone, BUT the fact that I have been given the chance to bring the Love of Christ to a whole city is awesome.

Thats about it for now! I hope you all are well! I miss you all, take care!

Love,

Elder Ferrell

P.S.

I am sorry, I have not yet been able to figure out how to upload pictures, I will try to next week.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

We’re very happy with the arrival of Elder Ferrell. We would like to inform you that in the afternoon yesterday, President and Sister Leite received him at the airport of Fortaleza – CE. Afterwards, he went to the President’s house for a testimony meeting and a dinner.

President and Sister Leite would like to thank you for all the support you have given to him to do this great work. We are sure it will be a great experience.

This is Austin's Mom... I just discovered a mission blog for Austin's mission. I found a couple of pictures not seen before of the day he arrived in Fortaleza... so here they are. I'm posting these for the day he arrived, but I actually found them July 3, 2017.

I am sending my weekly email early this week because I will be on a plane to Brazil on Monday!

I do not have very long as they only gave me three hours to do everything I would usually do on my Preparation Days, so time is a bit tight!

My last week at the MTC was pretty nice! It literally flew by! Nothing out of the usual happened except for we were asked to "host" or in other words greet all the new incoming missionaries on Wednesday which was awesome!

The coolest part about this week in big news was actually that Elder Rasband came to speak to us! He did more of a question and answer thing that was all based on his most recent general conference talk, but it was still Awesome! I cannot believe how blessed I am to have heard from two Apostles and one General 70 while here at the MTC!

Also, apparently the church did some survey which said that people want to see more of Missionaries Singing in mormon messages, so they filmed the MTC choir this last Tuesday night when we performed for Elder Rasband, and according to my zone I was standing right in that area where the camera would always start zoomed in really close on me and the guy next to me and then slowly zoom out. So I have no idea what it will be used for but keep an eye out for any videos with missionaries singing in them! I'm gonna start changing that reputation of the name Will Ferrell one missionary video at a time!

The hardest part about the week has been saying goodbye to all my Professors here, as there were A LOT who helped teach me. Saying goodbye to the ones who taught me every day was especially hard BUT, that's all part of it, now my job is to make all their time teaching mean something!

To conclude, I want to give everyone some homework! Attached is a link to one of my favorite videos ever. It is the Mormon message that Elder Arnold shared with me when I got to meet him two weeks ago. It just came out this last week, and I would honestly be surprised if you can watch this video without feeling or learning something from it in your life. I challenge everyone to take 6 minutes (its ONLY 6 minutes long!) and watch this video, AND shoot me just a quick email, even if it is just one sentence, about either how you felt, or what you learned from watching it!

Monday, May 1, 2017

It has been another exciting week here at the Missionary Training Center! I have two main pieces of big news!

First: I GOT MY VISA AND MY TRAVEL PLANS!!

One week from today, I will be leaving the MTC and embarking on a day and a half journey to Fortaleza Brazil!! Am I excited? ONLY A LOT!

Second: I Had an incredible opportunity to meet with a general Authority this last Tuesday and it was AWESOME! Let me give you the full story.

Tuesday was already a great day, but it got real when I was in the middle of personal study in my classroom and a random guy popped his head in and said "Elder Ferrell you are meeting with a general authority in 40 minutes, please look your best!" And I was like ummm WHAT!?

I rushed back to the Residence rooms and got ready and then I was off! I wasn't sure how at the time, but I had been chosen by Elder Arnold of the General 70, to be part of a 10 person focus group made up of missionaries from the MTC here. This was one of the most spiritual experiences I have had here at the MTC.

Elder Arnold greeted each of us personally, and then started by showing a video acting out one of my favorite general conference talks of all time. It was about how someone can teach us how to dance, but it is up to us to hear the music. The video (and this entire experience for that matter) was a pretty slap in the face answer to prayers which was incredible! After showing us the video, Elder Arnold starting telling us what to expect for the devotional that night, and then all of a sudden he turns to the MTC president who had been sitting in with us, and gestures to his talk sitting on the podium in front of him saying "I'm sorry president but this is actually not the talk I am meant to give tonight. I just have a feeling I'm meant to talk about something else. I do not know what that is yet, but I know it isn't this"

It was honestly so cool and we all felt the spirit so strongly!

After the meeting they all left us to ponder things for a while, and then Afterwards I remember sitting through dinner not wanting to talk to anyone because I was afraid of losing the spirit. That night I borrowed a suit from Elder Jung (Which fit supprisingly well minus being a few inches too short in the pants) and I was off!

I did not end up being one of the few Elder Arnold Called on to speak, which was just fine, because I am not even sure I would have been able to say anything if he had. His wife gave a very powerful talk herself, and then His talk was just incredible. He still used the same video, but then spent the rest of the time teaching us about what we can do to help people hear the music of the gospel if they want to. It was a truly powerful experience.

It is interesting because through everything that I went through before actually entering the MTC (Breaking 2 limbs, etc) I always told everyone, and was told by many, that it was all for a reason. Already here in the MTC I have been able to see this as every powerful experience that has happened here was one that happened because the timing was right, and would not have happened if I had come into the MTC in October.

Crazy Stuff!

As to the Rest of the week, Wednesday our zone helped host new missionaries which was pretty cool! I hosted some guy going to Louisville Kentucky and congradulated him on getting a foreign call. Thursday was uneventful, and then Friday was kinda sad because one of my two main teachers, Irma (Sister) Jolley left to go to Chicago for the summer. That was a bummer she was an awesome teacher! But my day quickly got turned around because that night when I went to check the mail I was rewarded with my visa then Saturday was Elder Jungs Last day here before entering the field, which was a bummmerr! But he is going to do so great in Japan!

So all in all a fantastic week! And man is this email long! This will not be the case out in the Field, the nicest thing about the MTC is we have all day to Email on PDays and don't really have anything else to do, so if my weekly emails become significantly shorter all of a sudden, I apologize!

I do want to end with a thought from sister Arnolds Talk last Tuesday:

What is Phototropism?

Phototropism is a natural phenomenon in nature. It is when a plant can sense the light nearby, and grows towards that light in order to receive more nourishment.

Each of us in our lives are also Phototropic. In general, we tend to seek out the good and gravitate towards it. This is a natural ability given to all of us through the light of Christ which we all posses. Even though this is a natural instinct, we can often allow negative and distracting aspects of today's world prevent our growth. Through doing this, we keep ourselves in the dark.

I encourage and challenge everyone to continue seeking out the good and continue to grow towards the light in your lives. I also strongly recommend everyone read the talk "The Music of the Gospel", and find some way to help yourselves hear the music a little better in your own life.

I love you all and miss you tons!

Elder Ferrell

1) The 10 missionaries and Elder Arnold from Tuesday Night ( Not happy that you can barely see me but its ok haha)

2) The Boys and I "Suited Up!" for the Devotional (me wearing Elder Jung's suit)